Setting out with SBOA

SBOA is distributing their school books for LKG on the 27th and 28th of April 2009, between 9 am and 1pm. All you need to do is produce the fees receipt. The uniform has been changed for this year, I enquired with the Tailor and he charges Rs.280 per set and takes a month which I feel is too much of time, but with no options but him, will have to go with it. All excited about the School Books and the new uniforms!

Whoever thought Bag shopping would become such a big event! I just discovered that my 3 year old has preferences in the style of bag she wants to take to school ! all this without any peer influence as of yet! God help me when that happens too! Jan sport was my choice of bag, but the cost factor made me look at other options too, as you might have already guessed, nothing matched up! Then Lo and Behold, we did find the perfect first school bag at Reebok, Besant Nagar , at a cool price of Rs.360 ( MRP Rs.599 with a 40% discount) a Red and Black one that fit her like magic! Harry potter isn't the only one who is school supplies shopping with wonder in his eyes! With that put behind us, now it's on to Lunch box, water bottle , lunch bag, pencil box, hair accessories, etc, etc. If any of you had luck with these, let me know...... Photo Courtesy :  Published in Young Nation Magazine

Tamil or Hindi ? The argument continues...... If you are a Tamilian, and have travelled outside Tamilnadu, you would know that, for survival Hindi is essential. However Tamil being the mother tongue, is it justified choosing any other language over it? Already, we have designated the second language status to it, should we throw it out totally, except for may be using it colloquially? Below are a couple of points by Dr. R. Jegnnath on the positive aspects of Tamil, Tamil is a very logical language compared to many others, eg.,we don't need to assign gender to inanimate things. Tamil has perhaps the most extensive, scientific and intricate system of prosody. While the Sanskrit prosody is much more extensive and intricate than that of English, it pales in comparison to that of Tamil. In spite of being spoken by a whole race of people including the illiterate among them, Tamil has maintained such a continuity and uniformity that literature written 2000 years ago can be und...

Kids starting to read will love the entertaining activities on Starfall. The interactive animation enhance learning experience and keep the kids glued to the screen! Children can hear the pronounciation while they are doing interactive games like growing a flower in the Garden Shop or holiday activities like making a snowman or sorting waste for Earth Day. Reading concepts are taught in a playful manner. The "ABCs" section features the sounds of the letters of the alphabet and corresponding words that start with each. "Learn to Read" helps the kids put sounds together to form words. There are short and long vowel activities as well as activities featuring sight words. "It's Fun to Read" has stories for the early reader like Magic, Music and All About Me. The Advanced reader is also catered to in the "I'm Reading" section with Myths, Folktales, Comics and Plays. On the whole a great way to start learning en...

So having got a seat in a good school for our 3 year old, what would the next step have to be? The practice in Chennai these days is to put the kid in pre -school or play school by the age of 2, so most have acquired skills for kindergarten already. Now what if you have chosen not to put your ward in a pre -school? (we did not send her to a pre -school).....Well you have to just rely on yourself to do the pre -KG tutoring . The basic skills they are going to need would be Adequately toilet trained and need to indicate in advance Can speak clearly for the classmates and the teacher can understand ( at least in the native language) Can listen to and follow instructions Know some basic manners, like please and thank you An enthusiasm to learn new things So I guess most kids would have mastered at least 4 out of the 5 points above. Apart from these other skills that your ward could use are alphabet recognition Number recognition Basic Colours and Shapes Using the c...

The School bus facility at SBOA School and Junior College is for students of class LKG to class 5. The fee for the bus ranges from Rs.1800 to Rs.2300 per term depending on the distance travelled. The school bus picks up students from a point on the route closest to the students residence and drops them back at the same point. If the parent is not around to receive the child, the child is taken back to the school and the parents have to arrange to collect their wards from the school. The other option available is to send them via private vans. This is definitely more convenient as the pick up and drop are usually at your doorstep or closer than the school bus drop point and they usually wait for a few extra Min's. The biggest drawback is that all the operators use Mahindra vans(The green boxy ones) and they are not very comfortable. Swaraj Mazda or even a tempo traveller would be nice, but I guess only if a big group of parents go out of their way to find one, the situat...

Few days back we paid the fees and finished the admission formalities. We still have to decide on the mode of transport she will use to get to School. The school has recommended a specific suplier for the school uniform material and also has given us handouts on the details of the frock pattern (for girls) to be stiched. A total of 3 diffrent uniforms to be stiched. A white set for mondays, a blue set for tuesday, wednesday and thursday and a house colour waist coat to go with the white outfit on fridays. For the boys it is a white shirt and shorts on monday, blue checked shirt and blue shorts for tuesday to thursday. House colour t-shirt with white shorts on friday. The school shoes are Bata foot fun shoes, navy blue in colour and navy blue socks on all days. The school will supply the house coloured waist coat and t-shirts, badge, school belt and tie.

Today we received an intimation letter from SBOA School and Junior college, asking us to meet the Principal to collect the admit card this week. So I guess I would be putting my daughter in SBOA afterall. It has been a gruelling two weeks waiting for this. Now starts the house hunting, transport hunting, buying school supplies and getting her mentally ready for June( 4 months looks like a lot of time, but I know it's going to fly!). This looks like a huge task in front of us, but as they always say, one day at a time...........

The Interview for LKG at SBOA School and Junior College, (Anna Nagar Western Extension, Chennai; affiliated to CBSE) was over on the 31st of Jan 2009. The wait for the results feels pretty long and it's frankly hard to just sit around and do nothing. I would prefer the results to be announced on the same day, but I also understand the difficulty in screening more than a thousand applications for limited seats. So here I am counting the days before the result is known.............

It is a big relief for us that the LKG interview at SBOA went smoothly. And as I sit back and think what helped and what didn't, a few facts did surprise me. The kids did need to know a few basic things for the interview and I think all the kids who came for this one were prepared. The main distinguishing factor was the stress levels of the parents, the more the parents were stressed about the whole process, the kids clung to them, when the parents treated this as any normal outing, the kids were more adventurous. Once the parents were able to relax the kids were more like their usual self. Believe me when I say, this was not the place or the time to keep pushing the kids to say hello to the other waiting kids or parents as every kid in that place was already intimidated by the crowed. The other striking feature I noticed was that when the Parents pretended to let the kids lead them to either the interview room or to the application counters, the kids automatically took control. A...